Memory Trade: A Prehistory of CybercultureThe notion of "culture" is changing at the speed of information itself. Computer technology is creating a new kind of public, a cyberculture with all its utopian & apocalyptic possibilities. But is it that new? Popular debate generally ignores cyberculture's historical context. The official history begins in the nineteenth century & tracks the evolution of telecommunications, the egalitarian dream of the global village, & the emergence of the military-industrial complex. However, this omits the deeper, prehistory of technological transformations of culture that are everywhere felt but nowhere seen in the telematic landscape of the late twentieth century. Cyberculture is an extension, rather than innovation, of human engagement with communication & information technologies. A work of archeology, Memory Trade scrapes away the surfaces of the contemporary world to detect the sedimentary traces of the past: a past that inflects the present with the echoes of ancient, unresolved philosophical questions about the relationships between humans & technology, creativity & artifice, reality & representations of reality. Memory Trade is an exploration, in text & image, of the unconscious of cyberculture, its silent, secret prehistory. From Plato's Cave to Borges' literary labyrinths, Freud's Mystic Writing-Pad, & Joyce's reinvention of language in Finnegans Wake, Memory Trade is a reflection of contemporary culture. |
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... activity . Ancestral moments are never simply " there , " awaiting the attention of the chron- icler . Nor are they univocal , or fixed in time as a discrete here and now . The relationship between the here and now , and a possible then ...
... activity . Ancestral moments are never simply " there , " awaiting the attention of the chron- icler . Nor are they univocal , or fixed in time as a discrete here and now . The relationship between the here and now , and a possible then ...
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... activity that demands literate skills , for it requires rapid comprehension of a sequence of letters , the automatic establishment of context , and finally the grasp of the gist of the text , which transcends the individual words that ...
... activity that demands literate skills , for it requires rapid comprehension of a sequence of letters , the automatic establishment of context , and finally the grasp of the gist of the text , which transcends the individual words that ...
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... activity involving language , Web brows- ing is a " problematic interlocution ” ( Barthes , 1977 , 144 ) . It was for this reason that Barthes described the intransitive verb " to write " as a " verb of middle voice , " in which the ...
... activity involving language , Web brows- ing is a " problematic interlocution ” ( Barthes , 1977 , 144 ) . It was for this reason that Barthes described the intransitive verb " to write " as a " verb of middle voice , " in which the ...
Contents
CONTENTS | |
The End Of Print 36 | |
Writing Trauma In Ancient Athens 44 | |
Copyright | |
7 other sections not shown
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abstract actually alphabetic literacy apparatus argued art of memory artificial memory Borges century classical communication complex concept contemporary context created critical cspace culture cyber cyberculture cybernetics cyberpunk cyberspace cyborg Deleuze Derrida Dery described discourse dream ecology of sense electracy electronic environment experience fact feedback fiction Finnegans Wake Freud Gibson Havelock human hypertext idea imagination immersion interaction interface Joyce Joyce's Kroker language linguistic literate logic machine mation McLuhan meaning Memex metaphor metonymy mind mode nature Nelson networks Neuromancer nology notion oral perception Phaedrus Plato polysemy post-symbolic communication poststructuralism poststructuralist printed psyche reader reading reference representation rhetoric sensory simulation social Socrates speech Stelarc suggests tech Ted Nelson telematic television textuality Theall theater things tion Tralfamadorian Ulmer understanding virtual reality virtual space visual Wiener World Wide World Wide Web written word Xanadu Yates